I was born and raised in Ann Arbor, MI. I am the oldest of 4 children, and have 1 brother and 2 sisters. My youngest sister and both my parents are deceased due to different forms of cancer. While in living in Ann Arbor I dabbled in college but mostly worked on gaining skills as a carpenter and cabinetmaker. My specialty was building restaurants, including booths, tables and salad bars. I moved to South Carolina in the winter of 1977 to escape the snow and to follow my girlfriend at the time. I was fortunate to be awarded a grant through a government program called “The Comprehensive Employment Training Act” to build displays for the Historic Columbia Foundation and go to Engineering School at Midlands Technical College. Later my carpentry skills carried me debt-free through the University of South Carolina where I took classes from 8 AM to 9 PM two days a week, and worked the other three days. Once in graduate school I was able to get a graduate assistantship to carry me the rest of the way.

Today, I have been married to my wife Pamela for 21 years. Pamela is a public health nurse at DHEC where she works with needy families and children that really need our support. We have a 15 year-old daughter Leslie who is a sophomore at Dreher High School. Leslie is very creative in both design and theatre, but her studies are leading her toward environmental engineering. As a family we are very adventurous and love to travel to explore new places. We especially like live theatre, and traveling to New York City to see it. We also like to tent camp and do so at outdoor music festivals like the “Lake Eden Arts Festival” in Black Mountain, NC

I currently work at EMC Corporation where I work as a Solutions Architect designing and implementing Cloud Storage systems for large and small customers. I travel extensively both in the US and abroad and enjoy experiencing new people and places. The part I enjoy most about my job is working with our customers to understand what they are trying to do in their business and how our products can assist in making that happen. Having always been in the computer industry for the majority of my professional life, it is good to experience and understand how other types of businesses think and operate. I feel very fortunate to be this far along in my career and still have a healthy mix of listening, documenting, designing and hands-on work in my job. Especially in a large company like EMC where with over 40,000 workers jobs tend to get very specialized.

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Questions or Feedback	Mike Leonard

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